The purpose of this study was to explore the paths by which word-problem intervention, with versus without embedded prealgebraic reasoning instruction, improved word-problem performance. Students ...with mathematics difficulty (MD; n = 304) were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual condition or 1 of 2 variants of word-problem intervention. The prealgebraic reasoning component targeted relational understanding of the equal sign as well as standard and nonstandard equation solving. Intervention occurred for 16 weeks, 3 times per week, 30 min per session. Sequential mediation models revealed main effects, in which each intervention condition significantly and substantially outperformed the business-as-usual condition, corroborating prior research on the efficacy of schema word-problem intervention. Yet despite comparable effects on word-problem outcomes between the two word-problem conditions, the process by which effects accrued differed: An indirect path via equal-sign understanding and then equation solving was significant only for the word-problem intervention condition with embedded prealgebraic reasoning instruction. Additionally, the effect of this condition on equal-sign reasoning was strong. Given the link between equal-sign reasoning for success with algebra and the importance of algebra for success with advanced mathematics, results suggest an advantage for embedding prealgebraic reasoning instruction within word-problem intervention.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
This study suggests prealgebraic reasoning is important within math word-problem instruction for third-grade students who experience difficulty with math. Prealgebraic reasoning involves interpreting the equal sign as "the same as" and solving equations (e.g., 3 + __ = 9 or 7 = 13 − __). As students develop strong prealgebraic reasoning, they are better equipped to solve word problems.
PUF60-related developmental disorder (also referred to as Verheij syndrome), resulting from haploinsufficiency of PUF60, is associated with multiple congenital anomalies affecting a wide range of ...body systems. These anomalies include ophthalmic coloboma, and congenital anomalies of the heart, kidney, and musculoskeletal system. Behavioral and intellectual difficulties are also observed. While less common than other features associated with PUF60-related developmental disorder, for instance hearing impairment and short stature, identification of specific anomalies such as ophthalmic coloboma can aid with diagnostic identification given the limited spectrum of genes linked with this feature. We describe 10 patients with PUF60 gene variants, bringing the total number reported in the literature, to varying levels of details, to 56 patients. Patients were recruited both via locally based exome sequencing from international sites and from the DDD study in the United Kingdom. Eight of the variants reported were novel PUF60 variants. The addition of a further patient with a reported c449-457del variant to the existing literature highlights this as a recurrent variant. One variant was inherited from an affected parent. This is the first example in the literature of an inherited variant resulting in PUF60-related developmental disorder. Two patients (20%) were reported to have a renal anomaly consistent with 22% of cases in previously reported literature. Two patients received specialist endocrine treatment. More commonly observed were clinical features such as: cardiac anomalies (40%), ocular abnormalities (70%), intellectual disability (60%), and skeletal abnormalities (80%). Facial features did not demonstrate a recognizable gestalt. Of note, but remaining of unclear causality, we describe a single pediatric patient with pineoblastoma. We recommend that stature and pubertal progress should be monitored in PUF60-related developmental disorder with a low threshold for endocrine investigations as hormone therapy may be indicated. Our study reports an inherited case with PUF60-related developmental disorder which has important genetic counseling implications for families.
Experimental study in this article is aimed to investigate the effect of reading comprehension improvement for English language students toward their learning difficulty by using the reading speed ...strategy and identify the effect of gender and teaching method on the improvement of students’ reading comprehension. To achieve the objectives, a test was prepared to measure students’ reading comprehension after ensuring validity and reliability. The study involved 200 English students of the schools registered in Direktorat Pendidikan Wilayah Irbid II in the academic year of 2020/2021. They were 80 males and females, who are selected by using a simple method. The sample was categorized into two experimental groups with training and two control groups with the same material learning in a traditional method. The test was distributed to the groups before applying the strategy to ensure the whole group. The result showed that there are differences between the mean score of experimental group and the mean score of control group, and in favor of the experimental group. The result also showed that there are no differences among the mean score of students, which is attributed to gender.
We provide a commentary on current debates about the definition of dyslexia. We agree with others that dyslexia is best thought of as a dimensional disorder with the best established causal risk ...factor being a deficit in phonological processing. Dyslexia is particularly common in children from families with a history of dyslexia and in children with preschool language difficulties. We argue that definitions may differ depending upon their purpose. Traditional discrepancy definitions may be useful for research purposes, but when considering the provision of educational services discrepancy definitions are not useful since all children with reading difficulties require reading intervention regardless of their level of IQ.
In rule-based (RB) category-learning tasks, the optimal strategy is a simple explicit rule, whereas in information-integration (II) tasks, the optimal strategy is impossible to describe verbally. ...This study investigates the effects of two different category properties on learning difficulty in category learning tasks-namely, linear separability and variability on stimulus dimensions that are irrelevant to the categorization decision. Previous research had reported that linearly separable II categories are easier to learn than nonlinearly separable categories, but Experiment 1, which compared performance on linearly and nonlinearly separable categories that were equated as closely as possible on all other factors that might affect difficulty, found that linear separability had no effect on learning. Experiments 1 and 2 together also established a novel dissociation between RB and II category learning: increasing variability on irrelevant stimulus dimensions impaired II learning but not RB learning. These results are all predicted by the best available measures of difficulty in RB and II tasks.
Children with learning difficulties (LD) face multiple challenges in classrooms settings while having to meet various auditory demands, such as understanding verbal instructions in the presence of ...background noise. These challenges pose a risk for academic failure, underachievement, and underemployment. Well-developed skills regarding speech perception in noise promote learning, communication, and academic success. These skills need further investigation to promote evidence-based practice and intervention within the audiological and educational fields.
To identify and review published literature on the speech perception in noise abilities of children with LDs.
A systematic search strategy was used to identify literature on five electronic databases using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Literature from 2011 to 2021 reporting on speech perception in noise in children with LDs was included.
Of 1295 articles identified, five articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in this scoping review. All studies used comparative study designs to determine the speech perception in noise skills of children with LDs. Results indicated that children with LDs have poorer speech perception in noise skills when compared to typically developing children. Trisyllabic words were better perceived in noise than monosyllabic and disyllabic words.
Children with LDs require greater signal-to-noise ratios if they are to be given the same academic opportunities as typically developing (TD) children. Future studies can investigate the functional outcomes of children with LDs to promote evidence-based practice and intervention.
Deep neural networks often suffer from performance inconsistency for multiorgan segmentation in medical images; some organs are segmented far worse than others. The main reason might be organs with ...different levels of learning difficulty for segmentation mapping, due to variations such as size, texture complexity, shape irregularity, and imaging quality. In this article, we propose a principled class-reweighting algorithm, termed dynamic loss weighting, which dynamically assigns a larger loss weight to organs if they are discriminated as more difficult to learn according to the data and network's status, for forcing the network to learn from them more to maximally promote the performance consistency. This new algorithm uses an extra autoencoder to measure the discrepancy between the segmentation network's output and the ground truth and dynamically estimates the loss weight of organs per the contribution of the organ to the new updated discrepancy. It can capture the variation in organs' learning difficult during training, and it is neither sensitive to data's property nor dependent on human priors. We evaluate this algorithm in two multiorgan segmentation tasks: abdominal organs and head-neck structures, on publicly available datasets, with positive results obtained from extensive experiments which confirm the validity and effectiveness. Source codes are available at: https://github.com/YouyiSong/Dynamic-Loss-Weighting.
•Children with learning difficulties in Ghana were associated with higher likelihood of experiencing anxiety and depression.•Approximately 5% of Ghanaian children aged 5−17 years had learning ...difficulties.•Approximately 4% and 3% of Ghanaian children aged 5−17 years experienced anxiety and depression daily, respectively.
Children with learning difficulties are vulnerable to internalizing symptoms, particularly anxiety and depression. However, only few studies have examined this relationship in low-and-middle-income countries using a nationally representative data.
This study aimed to examine the relationship between learning difficulty and internalizing symptoms of children aged 5−17 years in Ghana while controlling for covariates.
We analyzed children's data using mothers'/caregivers' reports from the 2017/2018 Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey Six (MICS 6). Data of 8,958 children aged 5−17 years were used for the analysis.
About 20% of the children had some learning difficulties whereas 5% could not learn at all. Learning difficulty was associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression of children. Specifically, children who had some learning difficulties had higher odds of feeling anxious APOR = 1.28, 95% CI:1.11, 1.49, p = 0.001 while those with some difficulties APOR=1.24, 95% CI:1.07, 1.44, p = 0.004 and a lot of difficulties or could not learn at all APOR=1.74, 95% CI:1.28, 2.37, p < 0.01 had higher odds of feeling depressed.
The findings call on stakeholders in education and health to prioritize the mental health of all school-going children, particularly those with learning difficulties in Ghana.
Treating each training sample unequally is prevalent in many machine-learning tasks. Numerous weighting schemes have been proposed. Some schemes take the easy-first mode, whereas others take the ...hard-first one. Naturally, an interesting yet realistic question is raised. Given a new learning task, which samples should be learned first, easy or hard? To answer this question, both theoretical analysis and experimental verification are conducted. First, a general objective function is proposed and the optimal weight can be derived from it, which reveals the relationship between the difficulty distribution of the training set and the priority mode. Two novel findings are subsequently obtained: besides the easy-first and hard-first modes, there are two other typical modes, namely, medium-first and two-ends-first; the priority mode may be varied if the difficulty distribution of the training set changes greatly. Second, inspired by the findings, a flexible weighting scheme (FlexW) is proposed for selecting the optimal priority mode when there is no prior knowledge or theoretical clues. The four priority modes can be flexibly switched in the proposed solution, thus suitable for various scenarios. Third, a wide range of experiments is conducted to verify the effectiveness of our proposed FlexW and further compare the weighting schemes in different modes under various learning scenarios. On the basis of these works, reasonable and comprehensive answers are obtained for the easy-or-hard question.
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